


After 02x06 (The Top Hat Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [20]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:51:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophie and Parker discuss the merits of strategically sabotaging Nate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 02x06 (The Top Hat Job)

“You’re worried about Nate,” Parker said, appearing behind Sophie as she helped herself to a glass of water in her kitchen.

“Jesus Christ, Parker! Would you stop that?!” Sophie exclaimed, once again startled by the thief’s uninvited and unexpected appearance.

Blank blue eyes met hers as the girl cocked her head to the side. “Stop what?”

“Stop sneaking up on me, you bloody lunatic!”

Parker just shrugged. “Being loud is like getting caught. I don’t get caught.”

“So that’s a no, then?” The blonde looked incredibly confused about the rhetorical question. Before she could figure out whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ meant ‘of course I’m going to keep sneaking up on you in the middle of the night in your own apartment, because I have no concept of normal hours or personal space,’ Sophie waved the question away. “Never mind. What do you want, Parker?”

“You’re worried about Nate,” she repeated.

“Yes. I am,” Sophie admitted. She had no idea what point the younger woman was trying to make.

“You said that if he kept winning, it was going to break him when he lost.”

“Yes, I did.” She hadn’t thought that Parker was paying attention, by that point, but it was true. It was only a matter of time until Nate finally failed and shattered the illusion of control he had built up over the course of his association with the team. Though she hadn’t come right out and spoken of it with the team, she had been decidedly uncomfortable with the few words she and Nate had exchanged on the subject of control while setting up that magic show. He was building up his self-image around his ability to control the world around him, and if there was one thing any good grifter knew, it was that people were their own agents. You could suggest things, manipulate, push them all you liked, but you could never control them, not completely. It was a hard lesson to learn, and so far, Nate hadn’t. But with every job riskier and more high-stakes than the last, it was only a matter of time. When they failed – not if – it was bound to happen eventually – it might be as great a blow to their mastermind as losing his son, and the man was already dangerously unstable at times. This obsession with their work, this newfound sobriety… it was a last ditch effort to cling to routine and sanity, as far as she was concerned.

“It’ll be worse the longer he wins?”

“Yes, Parker, I’m afraid so.”

“So we need to make sure he loses soon.”

“Wait, what? Parker, are you suggesting that we sabotage a job?” Sophie mentally crossed her fingers that that _wasn’t_ what the crazy thief had meant, because she couldn’t imagine what else ‘make sure he loses soon’ could mean.

The girl shrugged. “It’s easier than making sure he never loses.”

 _Oh. My. God. Seriously?!_ “Parker, you can’t just… Why?” Sophie asked helplessly. She wasn’t often speechless, but the woman in front of her seemed to have rather a monopoly on inducing that state in her lately. What the hell could she be thinking?

The thief, with a look that said all of this was, in her mind, as simple as one and one making two, counted off points on her fingers as she repeated herself. “If Nate keeps winning, losing is going to break him. It’s going to be worse the longer he keeps winning. You’re worried you won’t be able to fix him if he breaks too badly. So there’s two options: don’t let him break, or do it now, as soon as possible, and then fix him. It’s really only a matter of time until we lose. I mean, even I lose sometimes, even if I never get caught. So we need to make sure he loses. Soon.”

That was very… logical, Sophie supposed, assuming one had no idea how normal people thought, and would feel about being double-crossed by their own team. (Out of all of them, Parker was the only one who had truly accepted her excuse for trying to get both Davids. She had, in fact, gone so far as to say that she would have done the same, and that it was the taking-down-Blackpoole part of the plan that was at fault, since they had had both statuettes in hand at one point… though she had also pointed out that if Sophie wanted it that badly, she could have just asked Parker to take it in the first place. It wasn’t, after all, as though ‘the tiny naked man’ had been difficult to take.)

For Nate, though, another betrayal, by Parker as well as Sophie, would be even worse than losing a job.

“No,” she said firmly.

“Why not?”

“Having me… us… manipulate him like that… making him lose… it would be so much worse than just failing when we’ve done everything we could,” she said gently, willing the younger woman to understand. “We wouldn’t just be unable to put him back together, he wouldn’t even want us to try.”

“Well, obviously we wouldn’t tell him.”

“Parker, do you honestly think that we could pull one over on Nate like that?” Sophie, for one wasn’t sure she could even bring herself to try.

“Eliot would help.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He thinks Nate’s coping. And anyway, we’re not doing it.”

“Why not?”

“ _Because_ , Parker… I can’t do that to him. I just… can’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Parker,” Sophie nearly growled in frustration. “Of course I’m sure. It… it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t work.” She sighed, and then added, “I appreciate the fact that you’re worried too, and you’re trying to come up with a solution, but people just don’t work that way, darling.”

The little blonde thief seemed to collapse in on herself. “We need Nate, Sophie. It doesn’t work without him.”

Sophie smiled grimly, recalling the six month hiatus after the Davids. Unfortunately, Parker was right. It just didn’t work without Nate and his bloody helping-people thing, not anymore, and not only for her. “Well, then, I guess we’ll just have to not let him break, won’t we?” she offered.

“I guess.” The thief let herself out without another word. The conversation seemed to hang heavy and unfinished in the air, long after she was gone, and her fleeting look of anxious disappointment haunted Sophie’s dreams that night.


End file.
